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Penguins
07/16/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook's weekly segment on Global
Climate Change.
(Sound up of penguins)
Those are Adelie penguins, the smallest of five penguin species that live in the
Antarctic.
RN: The penguins populations (whatever the biological species) are evolutionarily
successful depending on food, sex, weather, and breeding territory. If all are in sync,
great.
But all may not be in sync for the two and half foot birds, says naturalist and writer Ron
Naveen. He's the project director of the Anatarctic Site Inventory. Since 1994 the
Inventory has recorded baseline data for such things as ice and snow cover and bird
and seal colonies on the Antarctic peninsula. Last year's results for Adelies raised big
concerns.
RN: We were finding that our penguin counts were down 20-90%.
Other studies suggest that since 1972, their populations have dipped by 40%.
Naveen and others suspect that warmer winter temperatures, up nearly 9 degrees F
since the 1950s, may be affecting the ice floes, on which Adelie Penguins and their
primary food source depends.
RN: In the last 4 winters with another one just about to come upon us. We've had
diminished ice cover in the Antarctic and that is serious because it is in the wintertime,
with the ice covering the sea that larval krill (larval fish) come up from the depths. Then
presumably their going to find sustenance under the ice or plankton and hide from
predators. So, without heavy ice cover some are concernrd that warmer winters have
caused a lot of fish and krill to be diminished well before their time.
This series on global climate change is supported by the New England Science
Center Collaborative and Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
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